More than seventy of the best-known songs of Georges Brassens with videos of Brassens performing the songs and English translations - also textual and biographical comments

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

La non-demande en mariage

The title of this song: “The Non proposal of Marriage” suggests a cynical view of the relationship of a man with a woman. In fact, the song is a sincere love song, in which Brassens expresses to his lifelong fiancée, Joha Heiman, his deep appreciation for her role in their very successful and very individual partnership.

His own arrow, (1) So many lovers have tried Who
have paid with their lost joys for

This sacrilege…

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment

Let’s leave a free hand to the fellow (Cupid)

We will both of us be two pris ..

oners on parole

Devil take the cook-mistresses

Who pin their hearts to handles

Of pots and pans.

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment

Venus often makes herself old

She loses her latin (2) faced by

The frying pan.

At no price would I ever wish

To tell off daisy petals in

The pot of stew. (3)

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment.

It might seem to be nice and snug

To put, out of view, at the bottom of

A jar of jam

The tasty forbidden apple

But it is cooked, it has quite lost

Its fresh picked taste.

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment.

You remove so much of the charms

By revealing too many secrets

Of Melusine.

The ink of billets doux fades

Fast in between the pages of

Cookery books.

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment.

Of servant I have no need

And from housekeeping and its tasks

I set you free

So as eternal fiancée

Of you, lady of my thoughts,

I think always.

I have the honour

Not to ask your hand in marriage

Let’s not inscribe

Our names at the end

Of some parchment.

TRANSLATION NOTES

1) It was for Cupid, the God of love, to aim his arrows himself. Love should be spontaneous and it is a sacrilege for people to think to arrange things for themselves.

2) perd son latin – The phrase « J’y perds mon latin » means « I am completely baffled by it ». Brassens uses this image to conjure up the mental decline caused by domestic chores and it is humorous as the Goddess of Love was a Roman Goddess.

3) Effeuiller la marguerite. Plucking the petals of the oxeye daisy is a game that lovers play, while saying “She loves me – she loves me not.”. Another image to suggest the adulteration of love by domesticity.

4) In Breton folk-lore, Mélusine was a fairy upon whom a wicked spell had been cast which turned her into a siren on one day each week. A local nobleman, Raimond de Lusignan, came across her with other fairies in the woods and was captivated by her beauty and gentle manners. She agreed to marry him on condition that he did not seek to find out her life story or try to see her on Saturdays. They had a happy and most prosperous relationship until one Saturday…. As this is a folk tale, which are invariably very miserable you can guess the rest. Brassens is saying that both parties in a relationship are entitled to their own private space, where they retain things secret from the other.
5) The French also talk of “le fruit défendu”. In English we always say forbidden fruit, but with some hesitation, I have kept the word “apple” in this line
.
6) la dame de mes pensées….Toujours je pense. There is a play on words here that I find impossible to translate. In the tradition of chivalry, a knight before entering the lists would choose one lady, of whom he would be the champion and to whom he would dedicate his endeavours. She became “la dame de ses pensées”. It was a relationship of the mind, a platonic love, because the lady chosen by the knight would, more often, be married to someone else. In “Je me suis fait tout petit” Brassens suggests that their relationship was of the same kind. However the mention of the forbidden apple suggests that not only was sex an element of their relationship, but that it always retained the tangy flavour of seduction.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Georges Brassens and Joha Heiman shared each others’ lives, doing a lot of things together, but they lived apart in their separate homes. They had regular telephone conversations and called around to see each other frequently. She went on tour with him and stood in the wings during his performances, keeping an eye on everything. Their’s was a personal and a professional relationship but certainly not a domestic one. They each had their own space, which could be described perhaps as their Saturday of Mélusine.

Georges Brassens is reported as saying of his "Puppchen" that she was not his wife, she was his goddess. On her death in 1999, she was buried in the grave of Georges Brassens.

Further Information about Joha Heiman
There are a number of songs that Brassens wrote about Joha on this site. One of these is "Je me suis fait petit" and my posting of this song got me in discussion with other bloggers.As a result there is now much more detail about Joha and about her relationship with Brassens there, which I and other bloggers have written after the song. If you wish to look at it, the following title is the link: Je me suis fait petit

About Me

Notes on the classics of French literature. During my years of teaching, I wrote thousands of pages for my students. Preferring not to discard all these years of work, I am posting them on the Internet as a resource for teachers and students and I am using my blogsite as the portal in order to give access to the individual books.
During my university course, I was an Assistant for one year in Arras and my nostalgia for Georges Brassens stems from these happy days- now long gone- when his songs were first being recorded and he was all the rage among the student surveillants.
When I opened this Blogsite many years ago, I used David Barfield, my maternal family name, as my Internet alias. My actual name is David Yendley and if any of my past students come across this site, I send them my best wishes. They were great company to be with.